She was beginning to lose hope that this was a prank.
“Well?” he prompted, impatience turning his voice guttural.
“Riker didn’t kill Terese.”
“Of course he told you that, but you saw it yourself.” Chuck’s patronizing smile made her want to scream. “So your denial tells me that either you’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome or you’ve switched sides. Which is it, sister?”
She tried again to free herself, but her futile struggles only heightened her awareness that she was in a lot of trouble. Stay calm. He’s your brother. He won’t hurt you.
Maybe not, but he could hurt Riker, and she had no doubt he would.
“I’d be happy to discuss all of this at home.” She cleared her throat and conjured her I’m the boss voice.
“Release me.”
“You don’t run Daedalus anymore, so you don’t give the orders. I do.”
The first stirrings of true fear welled up at his words, his matter-of-fact tone. “Why don’t you just get to the point of all of this?”
“Oh, Nikki.” He sighed. “You’re making this really difficult.”
She was making this difficult? “I’m the one strapped to a floor for no reason I can figure out, so can you tell me what the hell is going on?”
“What’s going on?” Chuck crouched beside her again. “I’m taking what rightfully should have been mine. I’m our father’s eldest. It was my mother he loved, not the whore who trapped him with her family’s wealth and connections. Your mother was nothing but a means to an end to him. The company should have passed to me, not you. I worked my way up and learned every nuance of the business. I know how many employees we have at each facility. I know how much the company spends on air travel every year. I know what kind of damn fertilizer is put on the lawn outside the Phoenix facility. You inherited Daedalus without earning your dues. You’re clueless about how it works. This company is mine.”
Nicole’s mind whirled as she tried to puzzle out where this was going. Clearly, he was bitter about how he’d grown up, but if it was the company he wanted, he had it. So why was all of this necessary?
“Chuck, the company is yours now. The board
kicked me out—”
“They changed their minds!” Leaping up, he crunched his foot into her ribs. Through disbelief that her brother had physically harmed her and pain that made her ears ring, she heard Riker’s roar of rage, followed by threats that involved Riker putting Chuck’s organs in places they shouldn’t be. “Your kidnapping drummed up a shitload of sympathy for you. The board wants you back so they can play up your ordeal to the public and shine the spotlight on Daedalus.”
Keep him calm. “I’ll refuse to come back,” she said in a rush. “I’ll sign everything over to you. Just let me go.”
“I can’t.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, and for the first time, she saw how tired he looked. His bloodshot eyes, identical to hers, sat like dull stones in their sunken sockets, and a five o’clock shadow darkened his puffy cheeks. “Don’t you see that I can’t?”
A panicky sensation began to wrap around her, squeezing her aching ribs. If he couldn’t let her go . . . dear Lord, what did he plan to do with her?
“What happened to you, Chuck?” she whispered.
“Why do you hate me so much?”
“Oh, Nicole,” he whispered back. “Have you been listening at all? I’ve always loved you. You were sort of a dopey kid, but I felt sorry for you.”
“You felt sorry for me? Why? I had everything you didn’t.”
“Except for a good mother,” he said. “Your mother was a neglectful piece of crap. Terese took better care of you.”
Nicole wanted to argue, but he was right. Well, she wouldn’t have called her mother a piece of crap, but she definitely hadn’t been PTA and Girl Scouts mom material.
“So you felt sorry for me.” She could barely spit out the words; her body throbbed. But she had to keep pressing him, had to buy time to plan her next move.
“When did that turn to hate?”
“I don’t hate you. That’s what’s so hard about this.”
She heard a loud bang that sounded like a fist hitting a wall. “I love you, but you had everything I should have had. Our father should have divorced your bitch of a mother and married mine. Instead, I grew up in a shack across town until I was twelve and he finally decided to claim me as his. And that only happened because your mom couldn’t have any more children and he was desperate to have a boy to carry on the family name.”